Problem: William is 2 times as old as Vanessa. 24 years ago, William was 8 times as old as Vanessa. How old is William now?
We can use the given information to write down two equations that describe the ages of William and Vanessa. Let William's current age be $w$ and Vanessa's current age be $v$ The information in the first sentence can be expressed in the following equation: $w = 2v$ 24 years ago, William was $w - 24$ years old, and Vanessa was $v - 24$ years old. The information in the second sentence can be expressed in the following equation: $w - 24 = 8(v - 24)$ Now we have two independent equations, and we can solve for our two unknowns. Because we are looking for $w$ , it might be easiest to solve our first equation for $v$ and substitute it into our second equation. Solving our first equation for $v$ , we get: $v = w / 2$ . Substituting this into our second equation, we get: $w - 24 = 8($ $(w / 2)$ $- 24)$ which combines the information about $w$ from both of our original equations. Simplifying the right side of this equation, we get: $w - 24 = 4 w - 192$ Solving for $w$ , we get: $3 w = 168$ $w = \dfrac{1}{3} \cdot 168 = 56$.